Friday, July 15, 2005

After Rove

There are people who are hoping that the Plame leak investigation will lead to an indictment in the Bush administration, and are also hoping that the indictment will be addressed to Karl Rove.

I am one of those people.

But I am also hoping for more than that. I am hoping that a Rove indictment leads to more questions of this administration. Questions like, why was it so important to blow Plame's cover?

Why was it so important to attack Wilson and what he was saying?

The answer to that one is politics. Wilson was criticizing the President, and any effort to knock Wilson down and cloud the issue would have been seen as necessary and acceptable.

In addition, Wilson claimed that one of the reasons that Bush cited for waging war on Iraq was bogus. Challenging one reason could lead to more challenges, which could have hurt the desired strategy of Bush running for a second term as a confident, successful war president.

So, in the event of a Rove indictment, can the next question be, what were those reasons for using the military in Iraq again?

Why has no one been held to account for the public claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?

Why were there no other options than attack and invade?

How do we improve the situation in Iraq, now that we have forcefully and tragically established that there was no threat from that country?

Get Rove out of the way, and let Bush face those other questions on his own.